1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for guiding and distributing network load flows, and more particularly, to a system and method for guiding and distributing network load flow, the system and method using a connection structure of network service equipment to integrate processing equipment having various load flows to reduce the load flow of the routing devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Various network services or applications exist. Common network applications include browsing network pages, shopping on-line and sending or receiving e-mails. Additionally, various network services, such as anti-virus protection, mail services or page filtering, are provided to the market. In general, users connect to the Internet via Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Accordingly, many Internet Service Providers provide various additional network services.
FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of an IP-based network packet transmission system according to the prior art. When connected to the Internet 13, user-end devices 10a and 10b are both connected via a routing device 11 to a service-providing device 12 first, and then the service-providing device 12 analyzes packets transmitted by users, provides certain kinds of services, such as protective services, and transmits the packets to Internet 13. Such a packet transferring mechanism cannot determine and generate route guidance according to characteristics of the packets. Moreover, all of the user-end device packets in-and-out have to pass through the service-providing device 12, and then the service-providing device 12 determines whether to provide services to the user-end device, which results in a heavy load on the service-providing device 12.
FIG. 2 shows another packet flow distribution and guidance arrangement. A user-end device 20 is connected to a routing device 21 first, wherein the routing device 21 determines packet routes for the transmitted packets. If a packet needs services provided by one of the service-providing devices 22a-22c, the packet will be guided to the corresponding service-providing device. If the packet does not need network services or the network services are completed, the packet is guided to Internet 23. However, the above mechanism, though reducing the load on the service-providing devices 22a-22c, shifts the load to the routing device 21. For instance, when a packet needs to perform three network services, the routing device 21 has to transfer the packet three times, resulting in a heavy load on the routing device 21.
Some manufactures adopt a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Virtual Private Network (VPN) to provide packets with different tags, to identify the packets to be transmitted to certain service equipment devices. However, it does not provide any solution for processing various user service combinations with flow guidance. Moreover, in the past, when faced with different communications protocols that pass through various combinations of network service equipment devices, network service equipment devices and equipment that provide network guidance functions have to be established iteratively, to satisfy the service demands of various network types, which increases equipment and operational costs.
Therefore, developing a way to reduce the load on the routing device when network service packets are transmitted and provide better flow guidance and distribution to reduce the complexity of service setting of flow guidance and to reduce network delay is one of the most urgent needs in the art. Additionally, finding a way to make various types of network value-added service equipment operation patterns to be compatible in a single device, so as to integrate a plurality of operation patterns and reduce equipment costs, is another urgent need in the art.